I am a MA/MBA candidate at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School of Business. I focus on Russian politics, economics, and demography but also write more generally about Eastern Europe. Please note that all opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and that I do not speak in an official capacity for Lauder, Wharton, Forbes or any other organization.
I do my best to inject hard numbers (and flashy Excel charts) into conversations and debates that are too frequently driven by anecdotes. In addition to Forbes I've written for True/Slant, INOSMI, Salon, the National Interest, The Moscow Times, Russia Magazine, the Washington Post, and Quartz.
I frequently make pronouncements of great importance on Twitter @MarkAdomanis. Compliments? Complaints? Job offers? Please feel free to e-mail me at RussiaHand@gmail.com

Five Myths About Russia

The past several weeks have been very busy, and I haven’t had a chance to post quite as much as I’d like to. I thought I’d throw my hat back into the ring with a short post about where Russia is today. Part of what gets me so frustrated about most mainstream media coverage of Russia is that people tend to conflate the country’s condition (e.g. people drink a lot, don’t make much money, and are generally miserable) with its trajectory (e.g. people are drinking more, people are making lessmoney, and people are getting moremiserable). These are, obviously, two very different things, but they’re often treated as if they’re interchangeable.

Russia is, in a myriad of ways, still a messed up place, and you don’t need to look very far to find evidence of all kinds of nastiness, abuse, corruption, dysfunction and general awfulness. But what interests me is that, in contrast to the doom and gloom of most reporting, many of the country’s basic social indicators are actually improving. Life expectancy is going up, wages are going up, the birth rate is going up, and the death rate, the suicide rate, the murder rate, and the poverty rate are all going down. I thought I would put together 5 charts that push back against some of the mistaken narratives I often encounter in the media. This doesn’t mean that “Russia is awesome” but it ought to seriously complicate our picture of a country in which things are supposedly growing ever more desperate.

1. Russia’s population is “shrinking rapidly”

This might be the most common error in Western reporting. In reality, Russia’s population is marginally higher now, at the start of 2013, than it was in 2006. Russia’s population was declining rapidly during the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, but this decline has leveled off and the population has stabilized. Russia’s population could very well start declining again in the future, but at the moment it is actually growing (albeit at a glacial pace).

2. Russia’s economy is in “serious decline”

The idea that Russia’s economy is somehow “imploding” or “turning in on itself” is encountered most frequently among right wingers, but was also a favorite trope of centrist outfits like Newsweek or The Economist. While Russia is hardly an economic hegemon, its overall economic performance over the past decade has actually been pretty decent, especially when you compare its performance to the horrible post-crisis performances of many formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe. It is possible that Russia’s economy might implode at some unknown future date, but at the moment it is experiencing modest growth.

3. Just like the Soviet Union, Russia ”spends all of its money on the military”

The Russian government’s bombastic pronouncement that it would spend $700 billion on procuring new weapons in the years leading up to 2020 led a lot of people to think that Russia was returning to the garrison state it had been under communism, when military spending was 30% of GDP and the entire country was impoverished by the insatiable appetites of the “metal eaters” in the defense ministry. While I would agree that Russia’s defense spending is marginally higher than it ought to be, the actual level of spending as a percentage of GDP is modest in comparison to Russia’s own tortured past and even to the United States (the data is from SIPRI and ends in 2010 because that is the most recent year available)

4. Russia’s alcohol epidemic “continues unabated”

Russians drink a lot, there’s no arguing that. But, mercifully, they are drinking themselves to death a lot less frequently than they did in the past. The death rate from accidental alcohol poisoning has been shrinking rapidly over the past decade, and is now lower than it was even during the height of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign (when the Soviet government was doing things like bulldozing vineyards). Russia’s death rate from alcohol is still very, very high when compared with Western countries, but it is improving.

5. Russians “have more abortions than kids”

This was true for a very long time, from the early 1960′s until about 2007. Abortion really was Russians’ the preferred method of birth control. But with almost no fanfare the number of abortions in Russia (while still quite high in comparison to Western countries) has been plummeting.

Basically, what these graphs show is that

1) Russia still has a lot of problems, and it remains extremely troubled in comparison to developed Western countries, and

2) things in Russia are actually improving at a reasonable clip.

Number 2) is a huge contrast to the “period of stagnation,” when Russia’s most basic social indicators were visibly deteriorating. Thus Russia in 2013, unlike Russia of the mid and late 1970′s, has a growing birthrate, decreasing mortality, declining numbers of alcohol deaths, and a broadly flat level of military spending. If we want to understand what Russia is and where it’s going, we need to take its many positive developments into account.

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If you’re trying to disprove Rosstat, or if you have conclusive proof that it’s manipulating data, I’d be very interested in seeing your proof! Seriously, if you have a comprehensive explanation of why we shouldn’t trust Rosstat I’ll publish it, in full

I gave you an example above, but let me reiterate: First lets look at the population totals for 1990,1991,1996 and 2001 (www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/population/demo/demo11.xls). There are no other data points from the 90s, but according to this table it was 147.7 in 1990, 148.3 million people for 91 and 96 and the number decreased to 146.3 in 2001. This should already be suspicious, but let us move on.

Now lets look at the migration data: (www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/population/demo/migr1.xls). My guess is that this is the data that measures the number of stamps in the passports of people leaving the country vs. people entering it. Thankfully this data is available for years from 1990 to 2010 so we can see how many people left the country in the 90-s and how many were forced to relocate to Russia in the same period. Since the data is in excel format you can easily sum the number of people who left the country from 1990 to 2001 (39 million) versus the number of people that entered the country within the same period (43.6 million). Which means that within those years there was a net population grow of 4.6 million people through migration.

If we go back to our demographic data we can compare the population totals for 1990 and 2001 and find out that the total population decreased by 147.7-146.3 = 1.4 million people. With the migration totals that comes out to a total of 4.6 +1.4 = 6 million people missing. I don’t think that even a high death rate can account for that kind of loss. That is almost equal to the number of Jews that died in the holocaust.

Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way and what I see is in fact the very “poor man’s estimate” of the loss of life in the 90s. But I still feel that with migration flows numbering in the 10s of millions of people leaving and entering the country over the decade there should have been more impact on the population totals, not to mention there must of been at least some difference in population between 1991 and 1996.

But I am afraid I am not a sociologist, nor am I an economist. I don’t even have a blog in a financial journal that could talk about numbers or trends and so I have no way to explain what I found.

If only there was some smart young ambitious analyst working for a prestigious journal, trained to work with that sort of data that could take a look at my findings and explain it in laymens terms. But I can dream on about it all I want, there just does not seem to be one around.

Part of the reason that Rosstat tends to start a lot of its data in 2000 is that the 1990′s were…a little bit of a mess. Given what was going on in the country at the time, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least that emigration numbers were a bit off, or that a certain number of people were “missing”. However, this is not from a deliberate or a calculated cooking of the books, but the inherent difficulty of trying to collect demographic statistics in an environment of state collapse. This is also why I try to focus my analysis in the period of the past 13 years.

All of that being said, it’s not exactly a secret that there were an absolutely gargantuan number of “excess deaths” in Russia during the 1990′s. I’ve seen various estimates of the exact total, but many of them are in the 5-6 million range that you seem to consider ridiculous and implausible. Russia’s mortality rates in the 1990′s beggar the imagination: there were years where Russia’s death rate *only from alcohol poisoning* was about 50% of the *entire* American morality rate. People died like flies from virtually every cause imaginable, and the birth rate collapsed. Part of the reason that I write about Russia’s (relative) demographic improvement, is because I realize what a nightmare the 1990′s were: while substantial in-migration of ethnic Russians from the regions temporarily balanced the population, the natural rate of change plunged downwards.

So, is it possible that Rosstat’s numbers in the 1990′s are a bit off? Absolutely. But has Rosstat, since Putin came to power, been engaged in a sustained campaign of statistical manipulation to make the country’s performance appear better than it really is? That seems highly implausible, bordering on impossible

“Morality rate” is a Freudian slip. There were a number of charts published by Adomanis which also had “morality” on them. The death rate in 1990s was about 15 per thousand and a birth rate was at about 9, so there was a net decrease about 840k a year compensated by about 400k ethnic Russian fleeing Central Asia, Moldova and Caucusus. I am sure that gave a great joy to liberal Americans and fro Nazi=liberal East Europeans. The Pindostan’s joy goes on anabated to this day, CIA publishes the same data, 9-15 every year and if you add up their statistics it never matches, the Russian longevity rates given by the CIA imply nonsense, like incredibly high percentage of men in Russia. Conclusion: there is a Yankee conspiracy to besmirch Russia in any way possible designed for an average American reader. Remember Beslan, how they gloated over the deaths of children blaming Putin. How about if somebody blamed 9/11 on US totalitarianism? They would squeal like a stuck piglet! How would US media react! There was a thinly disguised US gloating and smirk satisfaction about Beslan and any terrorist act in Russia. Had there been an earthquake in Russia, a flood, whatever, their kind would blame Putin! The reason I like him most of all? Because all the scumbags like LaRussophobe readership, Condi Rice, Hillary, etc. hate him, no end. The more they hate him, the more we love him. Why? Because they are trash, spreading cheap propaganda. It no longer works.

Come on Mark, you are not unaware that even Vladimir Sokolin, the former chief of Rosstat, has said that government officials aren’t interested in objective statistical information.

While I don’t believe that there is systematic doctoring of data, it should be obvious to everyone there is a serious conflict of interest in place because Rosstat is subordinated to the main user of its research, the Russian government. This leads to misrepresentation of indicators, dictation of direction for the research, and biased reporting. You should always take everything that Rosstat says with a bucket of salt.

What you’re saying (there’s a conflict of interest between those who generate clear, objective data and the government officials who will be judged by that data) is true of any government, anywhere. You could say the exact same thing about the Department of Labor or the Census Bureau. It’s a meaningless banality. What government statistical agency ISN’T “subordinate” to the main user of its research? That what it means to be a government statistical agency!

I’m perfectly willing to believe that Rosstat data is wrong *if someone shows me evidence that Rosstat data is wrong.* This isn’t just a ploy or a convenient posture: if I could somehow be a part of unveiling massive statistical fraud and manipulation by the Russian government that would be very good for my still-nascent blogging career since, I presume, it would generate a fair number of page views. But whenever I ask people to show me proof, they say things like “everyone knows that Rosstat is unreliable.” That is not evidence, it’s a hand-wave.

Now I don’t think that Rosstat data is always and everywhere 100% accurate. Tracking a population of 140+ million people is very difficult, and it would simply be impossible for Rosstat to get the *exact* number of births and deaths. But I absolutely do think that Rosstat data is reliable enough to get evidence of trends: if Rosstat’s data indicates that the birth rate is increasing, I think it’s safe to say that the birth rate is, in fact, increasing. Similarly, if Rosstat data says that the economy is growing, I think it’s safe to say that the economy is growing and that it would be inaccurate to say that the economy is shrinking.

More generally, there are plenty of other people who are far less optimistic about Russia who also base their arguments off of Rosstat data. They’re merely different in their interpretations. And that’s fine, I’m not arrogant enough to think that my particular analysis is the only one. But what I like to try to do is inject data into discussions where it is often totally and entirely lacking, like when the Guardian says “Russians are getting less safe” (they’re not), or when Newsweek says the Russian economy is collapsing (it’s not), or when National Review says that the cure for Russia’s demographic crisis is de-communization (it’s not).

Mark, first a question: what was the key condition for Greece to get EU/IMF loan back in 2010?

Answer: to create an independent statistics agency.

Standard practice in civilized countries is that the central stats offices are non-ministerial government departments so that the staff are civil servants but not under direct ministerial control. This, of cource, is not the case in Russia.

This is for anybody and everybody: if you haven’t had a chance to check out Yoshiko Herrera’s book “Mirrors of the Economy” on Goskomstat/Rosstat economic statistics, and her earlier “Goskomstat and the Census” article on demographic statistics, you’d get a much better idea about how it all works from the inside.

I think it is safe to say, even without reading Herrera, that we have a pretty good grasp about the inner workings of the Russian government. It is corrupt to the core and beyond. Corruption affects every single branch of it. You would need a huge leap of faith to believe that Rosstat is immune to corruption. And yet, we see Adomanis performing that leap repeatedly.